IN HIDING: Edward Snowden, who revealed the government’s phone-tracking program, is lying low after last being seen in Hong Kong. Photo: EPA

Rep. Peter King (AP)

IN HIDING: Edward Snowden, who revealed the government’s phone-tracking program, is lying low after last being seen in Hong Kong. (
)

The Obama administration began preparing criminal charges yesterday against the 29-year-old contractor who leaked crucial US surveillance secrets — while congressional leaders demanded an explanation about how the embarrassing exposure happened.

The Justice Department said it was in the initial stages of a probe of “unauthorized disclosure of classified information” — a key provision of the 96-year-old Espionage Act — after a high- school dropout/computer expert admitted that he was the leaker that Washington had been hunting for five days.

Edward Snowden said he took National Security Agency secrets and turned them over to Britain’s Guardian newspaper and The Washington Post to reveal the federal government’s vast data-mining and phone-tracking efforts to catch terrorists.

Rep. Peter King (R-LI) said Snowden should be considered “a defector” and extradited to the face US charges “as quickly as possible.”

“This person is dangerous to the country,” King told CNN.

But the case against Snowden could pose legal problems.

Unlike other high-profile targets of the Espionage Act, Snowden was not working for the US government — like Wikileaks enabler Army Pfc. Bradley Manning or CIA mole Aldrich Ames — and was not working for a foreign country, like Soviet spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.